1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical connector and in particular to an improved socket portion of a terminal to be used in such electrical connector.
2. The Prior Art
Electrical terminals of the tuning fork type configuration have had a certain number of inherent problems. For example, the terminal disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,414,865 discloses a terminal which is stamped such that the tooling shears partly through the metal stock with the remainder being broken forming an irregular and rough edge. When such a terminal is used in an edgewise configuration, the roughened edge gouges into the mating surface, often with undesirable consequences. Such a terminal would be particularly unsuitable for use with plated surfaces since it would destroy the plating.
There have been attempts to overcome the above described difficulties by forming terminals in such a manner that they would mate with their surfaces rather than with edge portions. Examples may be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,231,848; 3,233,208; and Re 26,692. The problem encountered with these terminals is they are quite expensive to produce because of the large number of stamping steps necessary to create the desired configuration and they are rather large and bulky terminals. It should be noted from each of the patents cited above that the terminals are of sufficient size that they are used for mating interconnection with printed circuit boards.
A further problem encountered in known electrical connectors is one of spacing. First there is the problem of interconnecting conductors that are on a first spacing with terminals of a second different spacing and then there is the dimensional problem of the overall size of the connector itself. Examples of connectors which have terminals configured to accommodate different spacings may be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,879,099; 3,990,767; and 4,062,616. In each of these patents the terminal is bent in the plane of the metal stock to accommodate the spacing variance.